Cold Case Project 2016 Introduction General introduction points to be used by the CCP Fellow at the beginning of the PRTplus. Many counties are familiar with the CCP & the process. The Cold Case Project (CCP) is now in its seventh year. CCP is a collaboration between DFCS, Office of the Child Advocate and the Supreme Court of Georgia, a joint project between the executive and judicial branches of government CCP is a quality assurance program that uses a statistically predictive computer model to create a statewide list of children who are most likely to age out of foster care without permanency. CCP conducts a case review using SHINES, looking for barriers to the child’s permanency, drafts a CCP summary narrative of the child’s case. This narrative includes legal barriers and makes recommendations for discussion at the Permanency Roundtable plus. A CCP fellow participates in a county facilitated Permanency Roundtable Plus. The “plus” being the participation of the CCP fellow. Also at the PRTplus meeting are the youth, CASA, GAL, child’s attorney, SAAG and other agency partners – service providers both inside & outside DFCS. Includes EPAC, WPAC, ILP. The point of this + is to get every who touches this child to brain storm& think of creative ways to achieve permanency – lifelong family and connections for the child. Especially important to have the child present. CCP is now operating under the Office of the Child Advocate. As part of the OCA's oversight role systemic issues that are barriers to permanency are identified during the CCP review and PRTplus. The OCA then shares this information with state level DFCS and the Governor’s Office in an effort to remove these systemic issues for this youth and other youth in state custody. CCP focuses on being positive and forward thinking with these challenging cases. CCP has access to additional resources and state level contacts to help support the county’s efforts for permanency and remove barriers when possible. Goal is for everyone at the table to feel comfortable discussing and asking for what they believe is in the youth’s best interest, even if it seems impossible or way outside the normal course of business, asking & discussing may make what otherwise seems unattainable then possible. The CCP fellow will take notes, brainstorm to find solutions to barriers, document next steps and schedule follow up conference calls to facilitate and monitor progress on the goal of permanency. The Cold Case Project: Digging Deep to Achieve Permanency from Winter 2014 Adoptalk by Michelle Barclay Michelle Barclay is director of the Supreme Court of Georgia’s Committee on Justice for Children, which manages the state’s federal Court Improvement Grant. She started the Cold Case Project with 11 other lawyers. To learn more about the Cold Cast Project, visit www.gajusticeforchildren.org. Now entering its fifth year, the Georgia Cold Case Project is designed to change outcomes for children who have been in care for years and are likely to age out of care without achieving permanency. The project is a joint effort of the Georgia Division of Family and Children Services (DFCS) and the Supreme Court of Georgia Committee on Justice for Children (J4C), supported with funding and expertise from Casey Family Programs and other private funders. Like the police teams after which the project is named, the goal is to bring fresh eyes and attention to individual cases that may not have progressed. In addition to seeking permanent families for the children deemed likely to age out, the project makes concerted efforts to learn from the children’s cases in order to make broader systemic improvements. Implementing Quality Assurance When a committed group of people in Georgia’s child welfare system decided to start the Cold Case Project, we looked to hospitals’ quality assurance (QA) teams as a model. QA teams constantly survey and monitor hospital infection rates, mistakes, and general functioning of the health system. When they find mistakes, a team reviews what happened and either corrects the mistake or works to put processes in place to prevent the problem in the future. Hospitals have labeled certain mistakes as “never events”— errors that should never happen. While never events still occur, constant QA monitoring efforts are the best hope of preventing and reducing the frequency of these events. Child welfare systems do not have this level of rigor and discipline in checking, double checking, and triple checking their work. Professor Eileen Munro, who has a background in economics, has written extensively about the need for QA in the child welfare system (including a book titled Effective Child Protection). In a New York Times article* and the book Reforming Child Welfare, former Washington, D.C. Child Welfare Director Olivia Golden urges child welfare systems to create a culture where reporting mistakes is encouraged and rewarded, not punished. The federal government is urging states to adopt continuous quality improvement (CQI) efforts in all strategic and funding plans. But rigorous CQI work has been slow to take hold. This slowness may be due to the lack of leadership stability in most child welfare systems (the average tenure of a child welfare director is 18 months) or systems’ orientation toward crisis work (although hospitals are certainly built to handle crisis as well), but most likely the reason is the newness of the concept of scientific monitoring in child welfare systems. The very first Child and Family Services Review for states’ children welfare systems began in 2001 while hospitals’ QA leader and accrediting body—The Joint Commission—has been in place and had the force of law since 1965. 1 Georgia’s Cold Case Project was set up to monitor one part of the child welfare system—and to improve permanency and well-being outcomes for children who are languishing in care. Operating the Cold Case Project The process begins by using statistical analysis to identify which of the 7,000 children in Georgia’s foster care system appear to be at greatest risk of aging out without permanency. A computer model assesses the factors most likely to indicate a child will leave care without a family, which are currently: length of time in care placement type — The more institutional a child’s placement is, the more likely a child is to age out. per diem rate — A high per diem increases a child’s risk of aging out. When a child’s per diem is high it means medical staff or shift workers are caring for the child as their profession. In a family or small group home, a child is more likely to be cared for by people with whom they can build ongoing relationships. Each factor alone does not predict how cold a case is; it is the combination of these three factors together that are highly predictive of a child’s risk of aging out of care. When the project started in 2009, the coldest cases were those of children who had been bouncing around in care for more than eight years. Now the coldest cases are closer to three to five years old. In 2012, the children served by the Cold Case Project had a median age of 11.6, with one-quarter younger than 7. The children and youth were ethnically diverse and came from all around the state. Half of the children had been in state custody for at least 36 months, and 73 percent had an identified disability. Once cold cases are identified, a team of lawyers takes over. These Supreme Court fellows first receive about 30 hours of training on funding streams, child welfare legislative history, complex trauma, and the education and health rights of foster youth. Then they take a test to ensure they are knowledgeable about child welfare. While changing a possible bad outcome for a child can be exciting, the day-to-day work of the project is not always riveting. Cold Case teams spend hours and hours carefully reading case files, recording information and discrepancies they find, writing up reports, updating spreadsheets, tracking tasks, and periodically discussing cases with one another. This work, while sometimes tedious, is necessary to change and improve systems that, in turn, can improve children’s lives. As part of the review, the fellows use a pre-designed instrument to identify legal barriers to permanency. In addition to summarizing the child’s reason for being in care and changes in placements and case plans, the instrument tracks if scheduled hearings took place, whether reasonable efforts were made, if the child or birth parents have attorneys or advocates, and what efforts were made to achieve permanency. It also lists all family members found during any diligent searches. The reviewers then write a narrative of the case and discuss it with the child’s workers and others involved. Often, they host a permanency roundtable where all involved parties discuss a child’s case, brainstorm ideas for permanency resources, and develop recommendations to improve the likelihood of permanency for the child. Whenever possible, the youth attends the roundtable too. The project’s lawyers can also turn to other team members for help. A retired Atlanta police officer and current private investigator can identify children’s family connections and track down important people in 2 a child’s life. A psychiatrist, a public defender (for children who have been arrested), social workers, an adoption recruiter, a mediator, and a public relations expert are also available when their help is needed. Beyond digging into files, the Cold Case Project undertakes a number of other activities to help children achieve permanency, including arranging counseling to help children consider adoption or guardianship, and continuing to monitor the case over time.